In June, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi announced a review of New Zealand's 66-year-old adoption laws. More than 100,000 children were adopted in New Zealand between 1940 and 1990. Many lost their original names, and never rediscovered their birth parents. And we still have about 125 adoptions each year.
Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll is a lecturer in Māori health at Canterbury University, whose PhD investigated the concept of identity in Māori adoptees. Filmmaker Barbara Sumner wrote a memoir about adoption called Tree of Strangers. Both women were also adopted themselves.
Watch the interview here.
